A BITTERSWEET LIFE (Korea – 2005)
Directed by: Kim Ji-Won
Starring: Lee Byung-Heon, Kim Yung-Cheol, Shin Min-Ah, Hwang Jeong-Min

A movie as nattily stylish and as brutally violent as its main character, A BITTERSWEET LIFE is a neo-noir Zen parable disguised as a revenge flick and it may just be the best action movie of 2005. Directed by Kim Ji-Won (A TALE OF TWO SISTERS) the movie focuses on Sun-Woo (Lee Byung-Heon) a tightly wound enforcer in a vast hotel who takes care of the jerks who hog the karaoke rooms. When his boss goes on vacation he asks Sun-Woo to look after his young girlfriend and, almost as an afterthought, if she’s cheating on him, to kill her. Sure enough: she’s cheating. In an uncharacteristic moment of compassion Sun-Woo lets her go and Kim Ji-Won makes sure he’s punished for his good deed again, and again, and again. 

Korea has become, somewhat unfairly, internationally famous for its brutal revenge-obsessed movies, but Kim Ji-Won sends up the genre while delivering impeccably timed thrills at the same time. Bristling with references to every macho man film from TAXI DRIVER to Takeshi Kitano’s SONATINE, this is a movie whose main character is practically a parody of OLDBOY’s stylish, pre-verbal killer. But it’s also a movie of small details – a cake finished before a beat down begins, a missing cell phone battery – and Director Kim has something else on his mind. By the end of the movie we’re no longer looking at a kill crazy revenge flick but a movie about the turmoil in one man’s heart as he decides to finally stop fighting for others and stand up for himself.